Two applicants for a position at my school plagiarized the same teaching philosophy. And I don't mean plagiarized as in failure to cite sources; I mean a 100% match in Turnitin. They are now being withdrawn from the applicant pool, at a minimum.

How do you know who the plagiarist is? Unless you can find the original source of the statement I think you have to ask the applicants if they are guilty. Unless, of course, they would have had no shot at the job anyways.

I think there are three bizarre aspects of this: 1) that people would plagiarize a document so personal as a teaching statement (which would likely result in a very bad statement); 2) that your search committee used Turnitin for a faculty search.

I'm going to make a guess here—if they hadn't been caught for plagiarism, they probably wouldn't have been super competitive for the position anyway….

We noticed the two candidates' statements were very similar. Googling showed that they were both apparently lifted from the same source. We are not running everything through turnitin but did with these statements after finding the match.

Re. the "fourth bizarre thing", looking at applications in early January that were due in mid-Dec is not at all bizarre. Definitely do not give up hope if you submitted something in December - or even around Thanksgiving - and haven't heard anything yet.